Former E-Gov Project Head blasts KN over sensational headline

Former Head of the E-Governance Project Alexei Ramotar has refuted allegations in a Kaieteur News article dated May 30, 2016, carrying the headline “Ramotar’s son paid over $32M, for ‘poor supervision’ of E-Governance Project.”

Ramotar in a letter to the editor stated that “it is a known fact that rambunctious headlines are what get newspapers sold. A quick look at the top 5 selling newspapers in the UK, for example, will show that all are tabloids. Unsurprisingly this is the path that has been taken by KN.”

Pointing to the recently released forensic audit report of the project, which Ramotar believes is “highly irregular,” he said it was quite satisfying that the newspaper deemed it worthy to highlight his remuneration. “It points to the obvious fact, that like many other forensic audits conducted by the new administration, there has been absolutely no evidence of fraud, embezzlement or corruption. After all that is the purpose of a forensic audit,” the former E-Gov Head noted.

Ramotar said there has been no evidence that any entity or individual has committed fraud, embezzlement or has been involved in corrupt practices.

In this regard he shared the view that “KN has instead had to write about remunerations as in the cases of Mr. Valmikki Singh, the accounting department at OLPF and me or who’s the father of whom as in the cases of Messrs. Azariah Assim, Abdallah Hamilton and again me.”

He claimed that the article tries to further “obfuscate facts” by making a claim that the E-Governance Project was a failure.

According to the former Head, the E-Governance Project was completed in August, 2014,  within its scheduled timeline and budget.

In fact the technical scope of the project was expanded without incurring either any financial or time scheduling penalties, Ramotar claimed.

“The credit for this goes to the hardworking team that from mid 2009 worked on all aspects of the project from design, budgeting, scheduling and implementation. To denigrate the efforts of my team is to do a disservice to dedicated Guyanese in a rather sad attempt at politicking,” he concluded.